To Wordpress or Not to Wordpress

ChadJessen

I am familiar with wordpress and have setup and maintain some wordpress sites. While using and playing around with Flarum, I am thinking that there is really no need to use wordpress. I think that Flarum is able to handle all of that. With the pages extension, the links extension and I am sure there will be many more extensions to enhance Flarum even more along with more features. This forum software is so fast, even after adding a bunch of extensions, it doesn't seem like it slows down.

I am curious as to what others think about this. I almost feel that wordpress would slow Flarum down.

jordanjay29

ChadJessen It all depends on what you need Wordpress for. If you're going to blog, that's probably something Flarum doesn't handle extremely well right now, since every post is treated equally unlike blog posts/comments in WP.

If you're using WP to build a website, you may find the capabilities in Flarum and its extensions suit you just fine. Especially since your users can maintain just one login for your site.

If you have an idea of what you need WP for, it might be easier to sort out if you can use Flarum for the same.

ChadJessen

jordanjay29 I should have thought of that. You sir, are one smart man. I think my site would be to mainly focus on the forums side rather than the blog side. It would be a community where like minded people can come together and communicate. That was insightful, thank you.

luceos

jordanjay29 a distinction between Blog and Comment, is probably the same distinction hierarchically like a Discussion and a Reply ?

Also I feel that Blogging is moving towards Forum-reactivity already, just look at the "Live-blogs" that pop up.

One simple extension where you could mark a discussion as a Blog item (tag?), one page that shows Blog items sensibly (less in Flarum style, or possibly that doesn't matter) and one Page that places the Discussion and its replies in a custom format is probably all it takes?

Prosperous

Having owned numerous WordPress blogs and forums in general I have noticed that I get better usage from forums. Unless you maintain an active blog and have quite a large audience who are willing to comment then you won't see much. What I mean by that is people will visit your site and no doubt read your blog posts, but nine times out of ten will not register to comment solely on that post. Forums are more engaging in my opinion and will keep members coming back to check on their posts and answers to their topics.

Hopefully that made sense. It made sense in my head as I was writing it. ?

Every WordPress instance I have had was intended for a website and not so much for a blog. Being someone that doesn't code and has no expertise in that department, I used it as a content management system (CMS) and it suited my needs. If I was to use another CMS I'd probably go for Ghost working in tandem with Flarum.

ChadJessen

Prosperous I have never heard of Ghost before. I will have to play around with it. What you said did make sense and I can easily see that forums would help people want to continue being involved in the forums rather than like you said commenting on just one post.

Very insightful, thank you!

Prosperous

You can register on the Ghost website to get a demo period for free (the software is actually free, but they offer hosted solutions which is the reasoning behind why you may see prices on their website). It's always good to see what's out there instead of sticking with the norm.

ChadJessen

Prosperous I agree. Thank you. I enjoy trying out new platforms/systems.

Prosperous

luceos That would be a nifty addition and pretty much killing two birds with one stone.

Miracle

I have developed several beautiful websites using WordPress, and two of them are selling products that have earned millions of dollars.WordPress has a powerful page builder that allows for the creation of stunning web pages.
Flarum is sleek and simple, yet powerful enough to achieve greatness without the need for treasure.